


1968

by TheMadHatterOfficial



Series: sad gay hours [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Drug Use, F/M, GUYS, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, it wont make much sense if you dont read the first part, klaus is Not Well, nonbinary klaus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:41:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28450317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMadHatterOfficial/pseuds/TheMadHatterOfficial
Summary: Dave and the Soldier are not the same person.It’s okay though.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Series: sad gay hours [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2083887
Comments: 12
Kudos: 55





	1968

Nothing felt real.

The sun was beating down through the bus windows, burning burning burning burning bur

The blood on Klaus’s hands was dry, flaking off and staining the beaten and weathered briefcase with blurred hand prints from a time both minutes and decades past.

Nothing felt real.

The bus jolted to a stop and Klaus stumbled off, tripping down the steps towards the ground. The gravel scraped at their palms, head falling and tucking down. They covered their ears, rocking rocking rocking rocking

_(“Shh, it’s alright sweetheart. Match my breathing, yeah? It’s okay, I got you, it’s okay it’s okay.”)_

Nothing felt real.

Nothing felt _real_.

Nothing _felt_ real.

_Nothing_

* * *

“Hey there Spook, looks like you’ve seen a ghost!”

The rest of the platoon continues to roar in laughter, Chavez’s hand tight and heavy of Klaus’s shoulder.

There’s a breath, then Klaus lets out one of their little manic laughs and shakes him away. “Oh, you don’t know the _half_ of it, kiddo.”

Chavez scoffs and shakes his head before leaning out of Hargreeves’s space, the smoke of his fag following him and clinging to his coat. “You’re so fucking weird.”

In truth, Chavez can’t be that much younger than Klaus. They've never asked him personally, but even nearly everyone here is younger than Klaus. Sans Lieutenant Delaney, that is. The draft tends to do that.

Across the camp the laughing has begun to die down, much to Lieutenant Delaney’s obvious relief. Klaus watches him rise with a roll of his eyes before disappearing out of sight, the jeers and protests of the men trailing after him.

“Aw, c’mon Lieu!”

“Don’t be a party pooper!”

“It was just getting _good_.”

“Don’t miss us too much!”

Klaus grins at the finger Delaney throws at them.

The sky is dark. Without all the excessive light pollution that New York has to offer, the stars seem to burn brighter than Klaus had ever seen them. Even the view from the tippy top of the Eiffel Tower couldn’t compare to the war-torn Vietnamese sky they gaze on tonight.

Even the handful of little white pills they took earlier didn’t dull their light.

“Whatcha see?”

A body drops next to Klaus and they jumps high. Their heart skips a beat or two, then begins to jackrabbit in their chest like a pair of broken windshield wipers.

There’s a shine in Dave’s eyes that Klaus finds addictive. They aren’t glassy or anything, but there’s a sort of gleam just behind the luminescent blue irises that Klaus doesn’t have. Doesn’t think they ever had to begin with, to be perfectly honest.

_(“If I didn’t know better, soldier boy, I’d say you were in love with me.”)_

Klaus, in answer, raises their cigarette and gives a rueful sort of giggle. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Well, that’s very presumptuous of you, Hargreeves, and I resent the implication of that statement.”

A little hum, and Klaus takes another drag as they looks back to the sky.

Dave takes the cig from him after. He watches Klaus’s eyes snap towards the edge of the treeline before he sinks into himself.

Maybe, in another life, Klaus could’ve been good for him. Maybe, if it weren’t for the ghosts and the drugs and the utter patheticness of their life, Klaus could be good for Dave.

Blood drips from Klaus’s palms where their nails dig into their skin.

They breathe in,

and breathe out.

* * *

Darling is eighteen years old.

Klaus knows this because they tell them the moment they land in 1968 Vietnam. He is eighteen years old and much too young for war. He still has that bit of innocence in him, wild and untamed as it is. He still jumps in puddles and laughs when the wind blows the petals of miserable flowers through the fields.

Darling has sun bright hair and mahogany wood for eyes. He has freckles that dust the bridge of his nose and a little scar bisecting his left eyebrow from when he fell out of a tree when he was nine.

Sometimes Klaus wonders if they’d have turned out like Darling in another world. Klaus wonders if they’d be as carefree as him, without the trauma and the ghosts and thrashings that left them with the scars of their father’s cane criss crossing their back.

Klaus liked to think so.

Everyone makes sure to look after him. Darling either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care to mention it. He always gets first rations, always gets first choice in coats and boots, always gets the cots without moth-bitten holes.

“I think this is what having a little brother feels like,” Dave murmurs one late night. He and Klaus are on watch together, the platoon just visible between the trees. Klaus follows his line of sight and catches on Darling by the fire, mouth open and drooling on his pillow. “Or a sister. I have three older sisters, and a coupla cousins, but they’re all a lot older.”

Klaus shrugs and taps their fingers on their knee.

“Got any brothers n sisters, Spook?”

Sometimes (oftentimes) Klaus misses being Dave’s baby. His _sunshine_ . Klaus misses the gentle lilt Dave always had when they were a child, the wide eyed softness he always gave Klaus and the complete and undivided attention they’d been able to claim from him. It was different here, fifty years in the past, with Dave living and breathing and _touching_ . Always _touching_ Klaus.

He also sees how much Dave held back. The first time Dave makes a raunchy joke in front of them Klaus gasps, the first time he glances at one of the nurses, trailing his eyes up and down and back up again, he licks his lips and Klaus chokes on his drink.

It makes sense. Klaus was a child. Dave censored himself - and quite heavily, it seemed - even well into Klaus’s adulthood.

Klaus feels grateful, in many ways. With the upbringing they had, Klaus doubts they would’ve made it if Ghost Dave had turned out to be grooming them all along. Dave had been their _everything_ , and Klaus knows, without a shadow of a doubt, they would’ve _done_ everything and anything for him.

Fuck, they still would.

(Even though, in dark stolen moments, Klaus kind of wishes Dave would’ve taken advantage.)

(Dave would’ve lost his mind should Klaus have ever said this aloud.)

“Six.”

“ _Six_ of ‘em?”

Klaus took Dave’s cig and breathed in deep. “Four brothers and two sisters,” they said on an exhale.

Dave whistled lowly and leaned back against a tree. “Damn.” He gave a little laugh and rolled his head towards Klaus. “Older? Younger?”

“We’re all the same age.” At Dave’s incredulous look, they kept going. “Our dad was a little, um… eccentric, I guess. We’re all adopted, but we were born on the same day.” Klaus laughed humorlessly and passed the cigarette back. “Basically like septuplets.”

“ _Damn_.”

Klaus giggles and pulls his legs up to his chest. They watched as Dave puts out what tiny bit is left of the fag and lean back with him.

“Names?”

The leaves in front of Klaus start to blur together. They close their eyes, the faint Vietnamese muttering somewhere to their left growing fainter as what little H they’d gotten his hands on started to take hold.

Dave’s voice is a hum in the back of Klaus’s mind.

Sometimes Klaus will just listen to Dave talk. Here, in the jungle, Klaus can sometimes pretend he’s back in his room with the faint yellow fairy lights above them. Twenty years later, Klaus still felt like a kid when they were with Dave, who always made them feel small and safe.

“Hargreeves? Still there?”

“Hm?”

Klaus looked over, and then Dave’s hand was on their cheek, burning through their skin and imprinting itself into their blood, their bones, the very DNA and essence of their body.

“Alright Hargreeves?”

“Alright.”

* * *

“I think I’m a god.”

The fire crackles in the center of their gathering, popping again and again over the wet wood. It casts shadows, and Klaus swears that monsters crawl and claw at the edges of their fatigues, living in the left imprints of their boots.

Jonesy lets out a short snort, and Singh leads the righteous rounds of howling around them.

Dave is beside him, solid and questioning as his eyes trail down their body in a considering way.

 _He wouldn’t understand,_ Klaus thinks.

None of them could ever understand. This power that runs through Klaus’s veins, humming and thrumming every moment of every day, silent and thundering and fast and slow and icy and _burning_ , burning burning burning burning burning burning burning burning burning burning burning burning bur

* * *

“I think I’m a god,” Klaus whispers as they stare at themself in a broken mirror. Their eyes are green; green like the trees and like the grass and like thorns that draw blood and horns of great mythological creatures that consume the souls of humans and wear their skin like the prized pelts of prized hunts.

(Klaus’s eyes are sometimes blue, electric and ethereal like Zeus’s lighting bolts and Poseidon’s raging tidal waves. They hurt and they _burn_ , electrifying their face and zipping through his body, tearing it apart at the very seams.)

(But only sometimes.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“I think I’m a god,” Klaus says.

* * *

Turns out, it’s not as hard to score out there as Klaus thought it would be.

They have a day of leave before they all march again and Klaus is trembling. There’s another small platoon who still have a few days to go and they all sit together and have a round of drinks.

At the bar one of the soldiers stares at Klaus. They doesn’t notice for a while. There’s a young brunette nurse who’s been screaming at him in French for the past two days nonstop. They haven’t been aware of much, other than the few times Dave touches their shoulder or their elbow, or when Jeon steadied him before they tripped over the bloody stump of some poor spirit.

The soldier staring at them is a bit older than the average kid around here, which suits Klaus just fine. He looks him up and down, turning to laugh at something his friend says before locking eyes back on Klaus.

There’s a little mole in the corner of his eye, ebony against his already dark skin. He has short braids that frame his sharp jawline and a smirk that promises _things_.

Despite what their siblings would say, Klaus is far from stupid or ignorant. They know what it’s like for people ‘like them.’ Knows what would happen if anyone found out.

The problem lies in the fact that Klaus _does not care._

Klaus makes a grab for their drink, but before they can get up and leave, there’s a hand on top of their cup and a face far too close to theirs for comfort.

“Shouldn’t be mixing pills and alcohol,” Dave murmurs quietly.

He tries to pry the cup from Klaus’s hand, but neither give.

“It’s _fine_.”

“It won’t be if you’re not careful.”

Ellison and Mickey shoot them a look and Dave eases off.

Klaus scoffs, sliding down from their seat and finally yanking the drink out. It sloshes, warm sticky whiskey spilling over onto their hands. “I’ve been doing this since before I could remember,” Klaus hisses sharply. “I don’t need you playing disappointed big brother, Davey Bear. I get plenty of that from my own family, thank you oh so much.” They give a sharp little tap to Dave’s cheek, still sticky, and saunters over to where the man with the braids sits near the window, finally alone.

“Come here often?”

The man looks up, one bushy eyebrow raising in amusement. “Can’t say I do.” His voice is warm, lilting a bit with an achingly familiar accent that bites at the back of Klaus’s head. The man extends a hand to the seat across from him and Klaus slides in. “Glad you could join me, though.”

“Anything for you, Queens.”

That brow pops back up with the other one as the man’s eyes frantically dark around the bar. Klaus stares before the man leans forward and whispers “I wouldn’t have been so bold with it, but I’m glad we’re on the same page, even if you could stand to keep your voice down.”

Klaus stares as he takes a sip from his drink, before they begin to giggle. The other guy stares in utter confusion as Klaus rocks a bit. “Um.”

“I meant your accent,” Klaus finally gasps out. “Queens?”

“Oh, fuck.”

It sets Klaus off again, pulling a reluctant grin from his partner as they clap their hands once or twice. “That is gold,” they says, quite a bit quieter than before. “But yes, we are very much on the same page.”

“Hm.” His eyes look Klaus up and down, but he can’t quite get rid of the smile now that it’s there. Klaus itches to sink their fingers into the little dimples in his cheeks. “You’re right. On the Queens part, that is. But you can call me Matt.”

“Klaus.”

They shake hands and Matt gives a pointed look at Klaus’s.

“Sticky,” Klaus says and wiggles his fingers in answer.

“I noticed.” Matt stares for a moment, then laughs.

Klaus just about swoons at this man being so entirely infatuated with _them_. It’s a rare enough occurrence that it makes everything around Klaus pale and dull in comparison.

(For as long as they could remember, Klaus wanted nothing but to mean something to someone. They had a taste of that growing up with Dave, but they needed to be loved, wholly and unconditionally, in a way that just wasn’t possible. They wanted to be the center of someone’s universe, to feel them touch them and hold them and kiss their cheek and run their fingers through their hair and call them pretty.)

“Hey, I have a room just a little further into town.”

(But this, this is what Klaus would have to settle for.)

“Sounds interesting.”

They keep a decent amount of space between one another as they leave, always careful. Klaus sneaks one last look around the place just in case.

Time seems to slow.

Dave stares from the bar, brows drawn and eyes steely as they bore into the back of Matt’s head. Klaus’s breath catches and Dave switches gears to stare at Klaus.

Then they’re outside in the bitingly sharp air, away from the stink and the smoke and pressing claustrophobia of bodies on bodies.

In the motel, Matt’s hands are warm. Klaus sighs as they tangle in their hair and peel their clothes off with a solemn sort of gentleness. It gets worse as he trails along the scars, their whipped up back from dad and the slashed wrists from their youth, the occasional gunshot wound and the cigarette burns from partners’ past.

“Oh, sweetheart,” is murmured in their ear.

“I just want to be loved,” Klaus says back, voice thin and wet. “Can you love me? Just for tonight.”

Matt kisses them high on his cheek, then their neck, their shoulder and down their chest. Klaus claws at the sheets, cold and scratchy, making high reedy sounds in the back of their throat as they rock back and forth under him.

“Just for tonight.”

* * *

Dave doesn’t talk to Klaus for over a week.

Russo comments on it a few days in, asks Klaus what happened. The others see it too, Jonesy and Lopez are confused as to why Dave started to spend time with them rather than Klaus.

“The two of you have been glued together since you got here,” Russo says over a deck of cards. Klaus puts one down and looks up. “Y’all fight or something?”

“I don’t know,” Klaus says.

Darling bounces on the cot behind them and looks over Klaus’s shoulder at his cards.

“Well,” Mickey says as he lays his own card down, “you better figure it out! I’m suffocating here with all the tension!”

The guys all begin to laugh and Darling makes a confused noise beside Klaus. “Are you even playing poker, Hargreeves?”

Klaus looks up, wide-eyed and confused. “I thought we were playing Go Fish?”

Chavez groans and throws down his hand. “I can’t fucking deal with you.”

Ellison and Ricards let out huge roars of laughter as Darling smacks Klaus’s cards down. Klaus kicks his skin as a bunch of the guys clamber up and over to the fold out table.

“Shit, I’ll play Go Fish!”

“Let’s _gooooooooooooooooo-_ ”

“Deal me out, Russo!”

There’s a rustle at the front of the tent and Klaus’s eyes catch on someone disappearing around the corner. 

Outside is quiet for the most part, grasshoppers chirping and the sound of gunfire distant enough that it hardly even registers anymore.

There’s a tent far back at the edge of camp that’s usually empty, especially this late. Klaus hears a distant shriek and fumbles for the bag in their jacket as they shuffle forward.

Klaus bites down and swallows the pills whole.

“Do you even know what those are?”

Dave looks up from where he’s sitting behind the tent. Klaus jumps a foot in the air before settling with a sharp exhale.

“Not really.” Klaus crouched down, and when Dave didn’t protest, they sat down next to him. “Matt gave them to me.”

“Right.” Dave swore and fumbled for his pack. “How nice of him.”

Klaus watched him light a match to the fag between his lips. Dave’s leg bounced as his cheeks concaved, the light at the end burning the air around them. The shadows it cast danced across Dave’s face, highlighting every crease and line etched into his sunburnt skin.

“Are you mad at me?”

Dave puffed out a short laugh, angry and echoey around them. With his gaze trained somewhere in the far right of the foreground, Dave couldn’t see the pathetic flinch that threw Klaus further back into the back wall of the tent.

 _(_ _“Can you stand in front of the curtain? So the others won’t bother me?”_

_The soldier’s shoulders tightened and his face became serious. “Of course. I’ll always protect you, Klaus.”)_

Love is a violent thing. It’s hot and roiling and _violent_ like the sea, beating and beating and beating until it leaves Klaus’s ribs blue and their skin dry and cracked where it broke on the cold, rocky shore.

They know it.

They have the scars to prove it.

Maybe, Klaus thinks, Dave’s fists won’t hurt so bad. Maybe they’ll be soft, and as they fracture the bones of their cheek, Klaus will thank him for his willingness to grace them with his god-touched hands.

“I don’t know what I did.”

Another sharp laugh and Dave is finally looking at him, smoke tumbling from his lips in great clouds.

Klaus thinks of a dragon. They imagine the claws that would dig into their skin, the fangs that would draw blood as they kissed away the hurts he left imprinted on their body.

“Why do you take those?” Dave snaps. “The _fuck_ d’you always needa be high for, Hargreeves?”

Klaus rolls the bag between their fingers and sighs. “I’m sick.”

“Yeah, the drugs’ll do that to you.”

“No, I… I hear voices.”

And Dave pulls up short.

It’s the easiest explanation and Klaus has given it a million times before. Hell, back - forward? - in 2019 they even have a schizophrenia diagnosis for this very reason.

“They’re loud,” Klaus whispers meekly. “The drugs help. They… they make me numb.” Klaus goes quiet, pulling at a loose thread in their sleeve. “I just want to be numb.”

Even now, spirits dance on the edge of Klaus’s vision all around them. They flicker in and out, but whether the drugs are hitting their powers or their eyes, they aren’t sure. Everything has a cloudy film over it, like those old polaroids found in long abandoned attics with the spiderwebs of memories crawling up around the edges. Or cataracts.

“How…”

Klaus looks up, the cigarette loose between Dave’s fingers and threatening to set the dry grass on fire. His eyes are as bright as always, little lines at the corners folding in on one another in heavy curtains.

“Why did they send you out here?”

Klaus blinks, slow and heavy.

“Dunno. War is war. Bodies are bodies.”

“ _Jesus_.”

Klaus lets out a little hum. Then another. And they let out a sharp little laugh and tap their fingers in a little tap tap tapping beat.

“Oh, baby.”

Then Dave is there, cradling Klaus’s head to his shoulder and snaking an arm around their waist.

It’s warm. It’s warm and gentle and everything Klaus ever wanted from him. These are the things of little - and old - Klaus’s dreams, of having their soldier boy’s arms around him, fingers tracing swirling patterns on their arm and brushing through their hair.

Dave smells like dirt and cigarettes. There’s the lingering of gunpowder on his vest and the cheap war booze warms his breath.

It’s nothing like Klaus would’ve thought he smelled like, but it’s completely and utterly _perfect_.

“Tell me it’ll be okay,” Klaus whispers into Dave’s collar. “Tell me it’ll be okay.”

“It’ll be okay,” Dave repeats fiercely and without hesitation. “Of _course_ it’ll be okay.”

Klaus nods and snuffles their nose into the skin of Dave’s shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” Dave says, ever so softly.

“Don’t believe you.”

Dave’s arms tighten around him and Klaus sighs. “It’s okay though. I can pretend.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“I can pretend.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

“Do you know a lot about stars?” Lopez asks one night.

“Fuck no.”

There’s a smattering of laughter around them all, shoving and pushing, asking questions of _‘why the hell would I know?’ ‘what use is that shit here?’_

“My brother’s an astronaut.”

Klaus lays in the dirt, hands up and fingers tracing some constellation or another, greeting the universe _Hello, Goodbye, Hello, Goodbye, Hello, Goodbye._

Ricards kicks the dirt up and laughs. “Is that so, Spook?”

“Mm-hm.” Klaus feels eyes on them, watching them with the countless blinking stars. “He lived on the moon.”

“Ain’t no one been on the fucking moon, Hargreeves,” Darling shouts out with a bright laugh.

“My brother has.” Klaus sees Cassiopeia, high in the sky and vain as always, the fucking cunt. She glows, looking down with omniscient fury. “Monkey monkey monkey… monkey monkey monkey man.”

The men go back to their food, chattering and ignoring Klaus’s mutterings of stars and astronauts and monkeys.

In these moments, time is sticky sweet and slow-moving. It wraps around Klaus like a blanket and ties weights to their ankles as they struggle to walk the ocean floor.

Klaus wonders if this is how Diego felt when dad locked him in those giant fishy tanks. They wonder if he calmed, his heart slow and steady in his ribcage. Or did he suffocate? Did his lungs burn the longer he was in there, screaming screaming screaming to breathe, god, _please_ dad let me out, let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me _out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out le_

“There was this mausoleum.”

Everyone has left. They’re back in their tents, time has sped back up and dawn is threatening to claw its dirty dirty way up over the horizon. Are they cozy, beneath their piss-stained blankies all cuddled like rugs in bugs? Or are they quietly breaking all alone, the echo of gunfire echoing and rattling their brains until they melted and ran out of their ears in thick, mushy rivulets of bloody memories and broken promises?

Everyone has left.

Everyone except for Dave.

“What was special about the mausoleum?”

He slides down next to Klaus, laying down until their sides are pressed together, warm and soft.

“There were ghosts.”

Dave nods, eyes flickering over and uncertainly resting somewhere between Klaus’s ear and his temple. “Were they scary?”

_Were they scary?_

Klaus, rather than answering, lets out a long snort before breaking up into laughter that sounds especially hollow to their ears. It’s hoarse and sad, haunted by the little kid with no one to play with but the decayed memories of memories, screaming and scratching scratching scratching their way into their long broken psyche.

Klaus’s voice has been scratchy and raspy for as long as they could remember. They think it’s because they've spent their entire life howling in pain and terror from the ghosts that have forever haunted them.

Dave is quiet.

“There was… this one ghost.”

The soldier, with his watery eyes and lilting songs, selfless and pure and Klaus’s everything.

They miss him. Dave is here, but he’s not their soldier. Dave is warm; a little loud, a little dirty, painted in pastels and sunburned by holy light.

Klaus's soldier boy is blues and grays, shimmering like a mirage and just on the edge of fading away. He’s whispers in the dark and unrequited longing and prayers to _Hey, Jude_ being murmured in his ear like a secret to be kept from the eyes of God themself.

Beside Klaus, Dave burns as the sun rises. His hair, dirty blonde and just dirty period, glows like a halo around his emancipated face.

Dave isn’t a disciple like their soldier boy. Dave is _Apollo_ , brighter than every star in the sky, a god in his own right.

This is where their soldier boy must’ve gotten his music from. Apollo, dead and forgotten, still sang his songs and found his muse in a scared little kid broken by the world long before they ever set foot into it.

“Was he nice?”

“Hm?”

“The ghost.” Dave reaches out, taking one limp, greasy curl and tucking it behind Klaus’s ear. “Was he nice?”

Nice. Nice wasn’t a good enough word for the soldier. Wasn’t big enough, or strong enough, or as all-encompassing as Klaus’s soldier boy deserved.

Klaus remembers their days spent with the soldier. They remember the songs and the gentle, soothing grins that lit up their childhood. They remember bottle cap shots and smoking on the roof and breathless giggles as they tried not to roll off the edge.

“I think I loved him.”

The sun rises.

Apollo sighs.

* * *

For some odd reason, Klaus has always thought that gunfire sounded like the hailstorms that would beat against their bedroom window.

They try to think of that as they duck down in the trenches, bodies falling left and right and blood dripping down Klaus’s chin from their torn gums.

It felt like the shit was raining down from above, dropping from leaf to leaf through the canopy above them until it finally landed on Klaus’s hands, on their tongue, warm and metallic and stinging on their lips.

The ghosts tend to crawl out of their own bodies. And not prettily either. They claw, like Beelzebub and Belial, peeling themselves from their mortal bodies caked in blood and brimstone as they screamed and screamed and screamed.

“Hargreeves!”

There’s a hand on Klaus’s back and it guides them into the trees. They follow, heedless of who it is leading them on, and stumbles over tree roots and through the knee-high mud and just keeps _going_.

The rest of the platoon is in the next clearing, shooting and running, shooting and running. The hand drops from his back, but Klaus doesn’t mind because they see a familiar mop of dirty yellow hair yelling and reaching towards them in the distance.

And then…

And then…

And then

* * *

Klaus wakes up in a hospital cot.

The tent is quiet, humid as the sweat soaks the pillow beneath their head. Everything aches, their head, their ribs, everything throbs in tune to their heartbeat.

He tries to move, and mostly succeeds, if it wasn’t for the heaving mass pinning down his left arm. Klaus blinks, flexing his arm again and again until he can glance over.

Dave sighs in his sleep. He squeezes Klaus’s arm tighter, head pillowed on their bony bicep and drooling through dry, cracked lips.

Cute.

“ _Klaus_.”

By the flap stands Darling. His grin is bright, his freckles darkened from when Klaus first met him, bouncing on his heels and looking around the room in relief.

Klaus groans and turns their head, managing a little quirk of their lips and a huff of a laugh. “Hey kiddo.”

If it were possible, Darling’s eyes widened even more as he froze in place like a deer in headlights. “Oh my god.”

“What? S’not _my_ drool.”

Darling stumbles forward. “Ghosts,” he breaths reverently.

Before Klaus can ask, there's a hand on their jaw and guiding his face to their left.

Dave stares, eyes red rimmed and impossibly puffy, as he strokes his thumb over the little bit of stubble growing in on Klaus’s cheek. Dave laughs, nothing more than a quiet _whuff_ , and he drops his forehead to rest on theirs. “Klaus.”

“Hey.”

“Tell him he’s a dick!” Darling shouts from the front of the tent.

“Hear him?”

Dave makes a small sound, eyebrows pulled together. His hand moves to cradle the back of Klaus’s head and nudges their noses together affectionately. “Hear who?”

* * *

Rory Darling died two months shy of his nineteenth birthday.

* * *

“Maybe I’m the devil.”

Dave looks over, Klaus’s reflection in the pond staring back up at them.

Klaus opens their mouth wide and sticks their fingers in deep until they gag. They touch their molars, their canines, painstakingly feeling each and every one of their teeth until their mouth tastes like dirt and gunpowder.

Beside him, Dave watches impassively.

Their fingers trail upwards, dragging spit across their cheeks and onto their forehead. They press their fingers in deep against their forehead, feeling feeling feeling.

There will be bruises.

Klaus doesn’t really care.

Then there are fingers prying their hands away, firm and gentle in the same motion, and Dave is pressing his face in close until their eyelashes tangle together into a mesh of silent promises. “What are you looking for?”

“Horns,” Klaus answers. “Fangs.”

“Hm.” He puts a thumb to Klaus’s lips and presses. “Find any?”

“No.”

“Do you still think they’re there?”

“I _know_ they’re there,” Klaus presses. “Like when your big boy teeth hide behind baby boy teeth.”

Dave nods, sympathetic and painfully understanding. “Want me to check?”

“Please.”

Klaus drops their jaw and Dave reaches in. His fingers are just as dirty and rough as Klaus’s, but aren’t nearly as violent as they run across their teeth and over their tongue. Klaus sits quietly and patiently as Dave takes his time to make extra super sure. He even presses against the gums and everything.

After, he does the same to their forehead. He runs his fingers all around, wiggling and pinching gently again and again until he finally pulls away.

“Did you feel them?”

“Nope.”

Klaus opens their mouth to retort but closes it just after. Dave offers a crooked smile and pushes Klaus’s unruly curls back. “All human?”

“All human,” Dave confirms. “Do you believe me?”

“Not really.”

“Do you trust me?”

“With my life,” Klaus says with absolutely no hint of hesitation.

Dave nods and pulls Klaus closer. Their eyes lock and Dave knots his hand in the hair at the base of Klaus’s neck. “You’re not the devil.”

“But what if I was?”

“Then I’d follow you down to Hell and be your attractive demon side piece.”

Klaus snorts and laughs, that manic, hysterical sound that usually sets peoples’ teeth on edge. It doesn’t do that to Dave. He just smiles back and lets Klaus’s fit run through them until they're breathless and tired.

“Promise?”

Dave is warm around them. He’s surrounding Klaus and warding off the devil’s hold on his soul, keeping them light and bright with the power of his soul.

It’s comforting.

Who would’ve thought that Klaus would finally have their homecoming here of all places? That they'd finally find their place half a century in the past in the solid, corporeal arms of their soldier boy deep in the throes of the ravaged Vietnamese jungle?

“Promise.”

* * *

“Hey Hargreeves. Wanna hear a joke?”

Klaus rolls their head up, away from where Klaus and Dave were huddled together on yet another late night watch.

“Maybe. What kind of joke?”

Dave looks up too, eyes trying to focus on what he can’t see and failing.

“A funny one.”

“No.”

“Oh c’mon! I was gonna make a joke about Abraham Lincoln!”

“Absolutely not.”

Darling groans and leans against the tree behind him. “ _Fine_.” Then, loudly yet seemingly to himself, “worth a shot.”

There’s a pause, and Klaus slowly looks up to meet Darling’s shit eating grin as he bounces up on his toes.

“You’re a dick.”

Darling breaks up into cackling laughter that seems to be too bright for the dark and dank forest. Klaus giggles along with him and clings onto Dave’s arm tightly.

“What… um.”

Klaus’s laughter dies off as they gaze up at Dave. Darling has gone quiet with them.

“Who are you talking to?”

Dave doesn’t look uneasy, exactly. More uncertain. Like he doesn’t know if it’s taboo to mention Klaus’s invisible visitors or not.

At least he isn’t pitying. Klaus fucking hates the pitying.

“You should tell him.”

Klaus rolls their eyes and Darling sighs. “Tell him I’m real.”

“ **No**.”

Dave jumps a bit and Klaus clings tighter. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I’m not angry. I’m sorry.”

“You’re okay. Just startled me.”

Darling looks just the same as he did all those weeks ago. Forever eighteen, bright eyed and fiercer than anything Klaus had ever seen before, his hair sunshine bright, the bullet between the eyes sluggishly drooling down his face and over his lips.

He shows up fairly often. He’s one of the quieter ones.

“Tell. Him.”

Klaus flinches and Dave’s hand finds the back of their neck and squeezes. “Want me to tell them to shut up?”

Darling barks out a sharp laugh and Klaus glares. “Won’t do any good.”

“Are there a lot of them here?”

Klaus tries not to think of it, but now they can’t help but run through the sounds around them. There’s a group of soldiers a couple yards away yelling what sounds like orders in Vietnamese. There’s a young girl, dress torn and blood low on her legs and running down her ankles screaming a single, continuous wail. There’s a young man in a skirt twisting round and round humming and dancing around the trees.

“Kinda.”

The crickets chirp.

Klaus turns back to Darling. “Do you see the light?”

Darling snaps his eyes back, big and painfully vulnerable in a way he hadn’t let himself be when he was still alive. “The light?”

“Mm.”

Dave’s eyes volley between Klaus and the spot where he sees them watch Darling.

“Can you see it too?”

“No.” Klaus follows Darling’s line of sight, but there’s nothing but the gaping emptiness of nightfall. “I deal in death, kid. I don’t think Heaven is my territory.”

“Is that what that is? Heaven?”

“Fuck if I know.”

There’s quiet around them - as quiet as it can be for a sober Klaus - and Darling stumbles to his feet.

“ _Go_.”

“I’m scared.”

Klaus stares a moment too long. They're searching for something, but Darling’s dark eyes just stay locked on the nothingness, his whole being thrumming in that way it always did.

If they look close enough, Klaus swears they can see something reflecting in Darling’s eyes.

“Wherever you’re going, you’re going to the good place.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s no way you’re going anywhere else.”

Klaus has seen many a ghost leave this plane. They've seen countless souls walk forward and fade away, off onto their next big adventure that Klaus wasn’t privy to.

Daring doesn’t look back. He doesn’t say goodbye.

Not that Klaus expected him to.

* * *

“I have these recurring dreams of my brothers dying.”

Dave hums and deals Klaus their deck. They sit in the tent alone, while the rest of the platoon drinks in memory for Darling and Jonesy and Lopez, all gone far far away.

Klaus never saw Jonesy and Lopez. They think they moved on before they got the chance.

They fucking hope so.

“How do they die?”

Klaus exhales a sharp burst of pot smoke. It curls around them and Dave knocks their knees together under the table.

“Five doesn’t actually die,” Klaus murmurs on another exhale. “He runs away when we’re thirteen and never comes back.” They pause, thinking back to that one Tuesday morning and the night spent huddled together in the fading library lamp light. Thinks of the nightmares that plagued them after. “He tried to run off, but I chased him down. But I know if I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have come back.”

Dave doesn’t seem to have anything to say to this, so he says nothing.

“Got any fives?” Klaus asks.

“Go fish.”

“You slimy bastard.”

Dave grins and kicks Klaus’s foot. Klaus kicks back and laughs.

“What about the other one?” Dave asks.

“Ben has tentacles in his tummy.”

Klaus takes another hit and watches Dave try to settle that information.

“Dad always wanted him to use his powers to hurt people. We’re in this abandoned cul-de-sac, and I just watch from across the street as he tears himself apart.”

Dave nods slowly.

“In some parts, I think I realize that he does it on purpose.” Klaus gulps and tap tap taps their fingers on their hand of cards. “Sometimes I think he never really wanted to live.”

Klaus feels sick. They hand the blunt over to Dave and turns in early.

Mercifully, the rest of the guys pretend they can’t hear Klaus’s heaving sobs go on well into the night.

* * *

Saigon is _bright_.

Everything shines, even under the cloud of smoke that hangs all around them. Klaus shimmies into clothes that are two sizes too tight, just how they like it, and drags Dave by the arm into the fray of melding bodies on the dance floor.

There’s a woman there. She’s local, with long, glossy hair and a mischievous glint in her eyes. She slides in with them and Dave and Chavez and Armstrong, sidled up next to Klaus with a coy smile and gentle fingers on the inside of their wrist.

Hoa is stunning.

So is Dave’s anger.

Halfway through the night Klaus feels a sharp grip latch around their elbow. They jump and flinch, but then they recognize that it’s Dave’s hand and sinks into it.

Klaus stumbles after him, half high and half drunk as they move to the furthest corner of the bar out of sight.

“Dave?”

His eyes are wild, hands frantic as they move to hold onto Klaus’s waist. He’s grasping at the tight fabric, fingers just brushing the scars around Klaus’s back.

“Kiss me.”

Klaus stares.

“Baby _please_.” Dave’s voice wobbles and cracks, pressing in close as his eyes flicker around them. “Kiss me, Klaus. Please.”

And, well, who the _fuck_ is Klaus to refuse an offer like that?

* * *

As the sky turns from black to blue, Klaus rolls their body onto Dave’s, sleep warm and unbelievably, indescribably happy.

Dave’s eyes flutter and open under them. Klaus hums and presses their cold nose into the column of Dave’s neck.

“Morning sunshine.”

* * *

Nothing felt real.

The pavement beneath Klaus opened old wounds, but they couldn’t give a fuck about anything. They gasped again and again, hands yanking at their hair tighter and tighter until it came out in clumps, dusting the ground beneath their knees and falling through the cracks.

The lights of New York burned their eyes and left them breathless as they knelt on the concrete.

_(“Shh, it’s alright sweetheart. Match my breathing, yeah? It’s okay, I got you, it’s okay it’s okay.”)_

Nothing felt real.

Nothing felt _real_.

Nothing _felt_ real.

_Nothing_

**Author's Note:**

> Let's play "Spot the John Mulaney Reference”


End file.
